Every Bit of You
by Morninglight
Summary: From 'The Dutiful Daughter' universe. Warden Mara Cousland just lost a toe to frostbite. Alistair shows her just how beautiful she truly is, scars and all. Sex and coarse language. One-shot.


Note: Got bored. Wrote this to make up for 'Beautiful Monster'. Can the Alistair fangirls please forgive me for that horrid, horrid tale? Set in 'The Dutiful Daughter' universe, so it's Warden!Mara and Alistair on the road to Orzammar; he's hardened now, so quite a bit more demanding. Autistics can suffer from amplified senses. :P Rated M for sex and coarse language.

…

Alistair groaned and turned over beneath the bearskin he used as a blanket, blindly groping for Mara. But the little blonde wasn't where she was supposed to be – and that woke the ex-templar up fully and got him out of bed. Judging by the ray of pale winter sunlight slicing through the untied tent flap, it was later in the morning than he expected… and no one had woken him up. What the hell was going on?

He wrapped himself in the wolfskin robe Morrigan had sewn by way of gratitude for killing her evil mother Flemeth and emerged into the bright light of a winter's morning, blinking against the sudden glare. It was warmer than it should be – he felt the tingling of Morrigan's wards trapping in the heat of the two bonfires lit right in the centre of the camp. Much to his shock, he saw Mara sitting on a boulder with her left foot bare to the sharp gaze and sharper knife of Wynne. "Child… This will hurt. But that toe needs to go before it develops gangrene."

"Do it," Mara commanded through gritted teeth. Wynne nodded and began to saw through the little toe already black from frostbite. The Cousland Pup sobbed through the entire thing, proving that no matter how brave she was pain could bring her to tears.

Alistair ripped the wolfskin robe from his shoulders and wrapped it around his lover's body once he realised what was going on, wordlessly hugging her throughout the ordeal. Wynne was right – it needed to be done. But it didn't make watching her toe being amputated, the blackened flesh and white bone and blood stark against the grey and white austerity of snow and stone any better. Mara so rarely cried, not with her assassin's mind and emotional distance, but pain always broke through her barriers and revealed her to be the vulnerable girl she truly was.

When it was done, Wynne healed the wound promptly, leaving a clean pale stump. "It will take a few days to get used to being without it," the mage said sadly. "But you will be alright, Mara."

"I know… Thank you, Wynne." Mara sniffled as Alistair picked her up. On a glance around the camp, he could see Sten with a bandaged hand and Zevran approaching sourly, the tip of his right ear blackened from frostbite.

"When women ask you about how you lost the tip of your ear, tell them the archdemon bit it off during a night of passion," Alistair advised the elf.

"I like the way you think," Zev replied with a wry grin as he sat down. "Are you _sure_ you don't want to hop borders?"

Wiser in the ways of Zevran's flirting now than when he'd innocently stated that he'd like to 'hop borders' because he'd never left Ferelden, the Warden snorted and re-entered his tent. It was obvious they weren't getting anywhere today.

Mara hugged herself within the confines of the wolfskin robe and the bearskin they used as a coverlet for their shared pallet of furs. For all of Morrigan's acidic wit, the witch had been truly indispensable when it came to surviving in the wilderness. But that had nothing to do with the fact his Little Lady Cousland was looking especially haggard today, her overlarge sky-blue eyes utterly miserable with more than lingering pain from the amputation. Alistair crawled under the other end of the bearskin, examining his fellow Grey Warden's features minutely.

_I remember Uldred's claw leaving that scar down the right side of her face, the four arrows in the Tower of Ishal those round holes in her torso, the undead in Redcliffe those horrid scars on her side, the bereskarn that chipped tooth…_ By luck or the virtue of wearing heavy plate armour, Alistair had avoided gaining _too_ many scars… but Mara's preference for worn leathers and fighting style reliant on agility combined with her absolutely insane tendency to be first into combat meant she'd picked up more than her fair share of wounds. Wynne had taken to calling her 'the walking wound magnet'.

Intimately familiar with the subtle tics of a face most considered impassive, Alistair realised that the amputated toe was the latest in a series of blows dealt to Mara's self-esteem. He'd never known her without the lines of grief and strain that bracketed eyes and mouth, legacy of the slaughter of most of her family at Highever and deepened by the burden of leadership he'd dumped on her in the early days of their flight from Ostagar. No doubt she'd once been as fresh-faced as any other maiden (maybe not as flawless as Lady Isolde or Queen Anora, but that was only because the Couslands had been known for expecting their children of both genders to actually _work_) but he would never see it. He wondered where she got the tattoo from…

"You know," he murmured as he brushed a growing lock of ash-blonde hair out of those haunted sky-blue eyes, "I've never heard the story of the tattoo."

Mara looked askance at him, the swirling black lines of the tattoo over her right eye emphasising the hugeness of the orb. "Little enough to tell," she responded in a strained, breathy version of her husky contralto. "I got drunk one day with Rory Gilmore and my big brother; we all got tattoos."

"I imagine your mother wasn't too impressed," Alistair ventured.

"She was more pissed off that Fergus and Rory had let sixteen-year-old me get drunk after I came third in a tournament…" Mara's features spasmed with grief for a moment. "Father was more along the lines of amused despite my mother's insistence I'd have trouble finding a spouse with the tattoo…"

Alistair twined his hands in her hair and leaned forward to plant a hard, quick kiss on her full lips. "Good thing we're getting married in Orzammar, right?"

"Yeah…" But his Little Lady Cousland hung her head. "I… wish they were here. Loghain… wouldn't have gotten away with his actions and we'd probably have gotten the treaties by now…"

"Do you think they'd have approved of me?" Alistair asked cautiously.

Mara stared at him like he was daft, the haunted expression replaced by exasperation. "Of course! And no, not just because you're a royal bastard! Because you're handsome and kind and sweet and for whatever crazy reason think I'm beautiful…"

"Of _course_ you're beautiful," Alistair countered gently. "You're ravishing and resourceful and I am so fucking lucky to have you in my life."

"You feel that way even with all the scars?" Mara's voice was unsure; for a woman who had more sexual experience than he, she was uncertain at the strangest times when it came to romance. Perhaps it was part of whatever made her so… quirky.

But Alistair didn't give a shit. She belonged to him, she would marry him in Orzammar, and if Eamon was going to make him King then by the Maker and His Bride Mara would be his Queen.

"What scars?" he asked, kissing his way along the scar which gouged its way down her cheek. "I don't see scars. I see beauty marks."

"Did you suffer a head blow recently?" Mara demanded suspiciously.

"Mmm… If I'm ever witless it's because I'm always struck by how beautiful you are," Alistair murmured in reply as he pulled away the wolfskin robe to kiss the right side of her neck. "I love you _because_ of your scars, not in spite of them."

She tilted her head to give him better access to the long line of her neck; he imagined her lips parted to release the sigh of pleasure he heard as he sucked at the juncture between throat and collarbone. Mara's sensitivity to touch made her exquisitely responsive with just a little pressure in the right place…

Alistair continued downwards, pressing kisses to the scars which decorated her body, licking and tasting the differences in texture between flawless and flawed. Mara's fingers, callused but for the sanded pads and tips, traced the lines of his broad shoulders and muscular arms. Her sensitivity to touch and the keen obsession for precision and mechanics had made her an excellent lockpicker; even Leliana, a trained bard, was in awe of Mara's talents. If she hadn't been a teyrn's daughter, Little Lady Cousland would have made an excellent spy or burglar…

He finally reached her left foot and lazily kissed the four remaining toes before licking at the stump of her smallest one. Mara instinctively lashed out as his lips brushed the sole of her foot; Alistair fell back onto his haunches, just dodging the kick, as the little blonde gave him an absolutely mortified look. "Ticklish, hmm?" he asked mischievously.

"You know I am!" she retorted.

"Would you kick me if I were going to do… this?" Alistair asked before planting lazy kisses along the inside of her calves and thighs. He could feel the tremble as Mara fought her natural instincts to shy away from the touch until he reached the juncture between her legs.

This was a rare thing they did; Mara was more comfortable with taking him in her mouth than she was with his lips on her sex. Sometimes the sensitivity was _too_ much for her to bear; but the fragrance of her was enough to drive Alistair to nuzzle and lick and taste gently, teasingly, always pausing whenever she flinched too much. But his beloved remained _mostly_ still, gasping and moaning, her fingers twined in his longish hair until she came with a cry.

Then he rose and buried himself in her with a relieved groan. _This_ was home, even more so than the feeling he'd had when Duncan rescued him from the Chantry. The only thing which would have made it better was all of the Grey Wardens alive and in the compound at Denerim, Mara and Alistair curled up in one of the rooms given to married or partnered Wardens on a winter's day… But if the world had been perfect, Little Lady Cousland would have remained in Highever, probably married to her lover Dairren by now, and completely out of his reach.

"_Never dwell on 'what if'," Duncan would tell me. "Be glad for what you've got when you've got it, because life is too short to think on 'what might have been."_

It was Mara's turn to touch and taste Alistair as he thrust, her legs locking around his hips tightly to keep him in place. He watched those too-large blue eyes half-close in pleasure as his own built up, her full lips part as she moaned, and then open as she keened in climax, his following on the heels of hers with familiar swiftness.

"Maker's breath… _Mine._ Mine until you or I meet the Maker," he whispered harshly, panting for breath in the aftermath. "Every bit of you, every scar, every freckle… _Mine._"

"Goes both ways, my love," she gaspingly replied.

"Never doubt that I find you beautiful," Alistair told her. "I don't want anyone else. Just you."

"Thank you… love." And then Mara went on to show just how thankful she was.

He never thought he'd be grateful for frostbite to afflict their party… Because it gave him the chance to show his beloved just how beautiful she truly was.


End file.
